Another similar, but more comical, incident—[[175]]one of many—occurred another day, when a shapeless figure, almost bent over in two and walking unsteadily upon his feet, approached my camp. We were in a barren, desolate spot, cold and dreary, and my men had put up chokdens of stones all round the camp.
The queer stranger had a most comical appearance, his waist down to his knees, so full was his coat with stores of all kinds. He bowed profusely, his shaggy hair flying—as much as it could fly, for it was so dirty and entangled—in the breeze.
“Who are you and what do you want?” we asked him.
“I am a poor, poor man, with no food and no friends.”
I well knew this to be a lie, as I had had similar visitors before. He was a mere Tibetan spy—a soldier in the disguise of a beggar, to come and find out all about us.
“What do you want?”
“I am hungry and have pains in my inside for lack of food.”
I ordered my cook to give him plentiful meat and rice and some sweet paste. A little of it he ate; the rest he stored away in his coat, wrapped up in dirty rags. [[176]]
“Is there anything else you want?”
“Yes, I would like some tchah (tea).”